An awkward product positioned between a sports assist device and a child's electronic toy.
For domestic players, "electronic pets" seem to be a bit of a year old.
These small things, which are composed of the simplest pixels and can only stretch their fists and feet on a miniature LCD screen, once spread all over the world. And if you want to talk about the most representative of them, in addition to the "Takuma Songzi", which symbolizes the "origin of all things", the most familiar to domestic players is probably the most popular "Digimon" among children in the early 21st century.
Just the past two years, for the "Digimon" brand, should be a very important two years, if you count the "Digimon 03" broadcast in 2001, the series of "20th anniversary" project does not seem to be over, a large number of new toys printed with the Bandai logo, new projects, have appeared in people's vision, which also includes a series of live-action CG promotional films with the keyword of "growing up with Digimon".
It was also during this period that I first heard of the existence of the "Vitrl Bracelet", as shown in CG, which is an "electronic bracelet" worn on the wrist position, in which users can cultivate their own Digimon.
Although the names are different, but a long time ago, such a machine had a more well-known name in China -
Digital Tyrannosaurus Machine.
The "Bracelet of Life" is the unknown number of generations of digital tyrannosaurus machines launched by Bandai in 2021. As its name suggests, the Tyrannosaurus rex and the popular "electronic bracelet" on the market have a very similar appearance: consisting of two rubber wristbands, connected to an electronic device that integrates a monitor, a color display, and an electronic pet.
Most of the time, the Digimon raised by the player will stay in the main interface of the bracelet in the form of color pixel drawings. As long as the wearer has certain specific conditions, you can see the whole process of digital babies evolving from "infancy" to "ultimate body".
Different from the past digital tyrannosaurus machine, the life bracelet as early as the publicity period, it is claimed that it can monitor the user's "Vitrl", that is, vital signs, to achieve the "one heart" and "common growth" of the user and the Digimon. During the wearing of the bracelet, the user's behavior will be converted into specific "Vitrl" values, and these values will also directly affect the strength and evolution of Digimon.
I have to admit that these features are indeed very attractive to a gamer and a light outdoor enthusiast. But for some of the intuitions I had for Bandai Toys for a long time, I did not choose to start this toy in the first place. Until August of the same year, the broadcast of the new TV anime "Digimon Ghost Game" was scheduled by Fuji Tv.
The original version of the "Bracelet of Life", released in March 2021, is divided into three colors: black and white and fluorescent yellow, with a new Digimon "Pulse Beast" and a 2nd generation protagonist "V Boy Beast" that can be cultivated. What is not beyond the user's expectation is that this batch of goods is indeed a small problem in all aspects of software and hardware, although most of the problems do not affect the use of users, but it does make the first wave of users who eat crabs feel that some of the considerations from the design level are insufficient.
Under such a premise, Bandai also made an appropriate response, and when the "Digimon Ghost Game" was broadcast in October, the new model of the Life Bracelet, "Life Bracelet V", was also released. In addition to the appearance of the same dark blue wristband as in the animation, the basic functions have been improved on the basis of the original software.
Two months after its release, we basically got through this "Life Bracelet V". Therefore, this review will also be mainly for the "life bracelet V" review, hoping to talk about the "next generation" digital tyrannosaurus machine at the same time, but also to give a reasonable evaluation of this type of "toy".
The product has a cultureable gamma beast DIM card built in
First of all, it needs to be explained in advance that although the "Life Bracelet V" is the latest version of the Life Bracelet, their essence is only a toy that is not out of the box after all, if you must take them, compared with those real smart bracelets, it is somewhat unfair.
The "Life Bracelet V" and the original bracelet have exactly the same composition structure: two rubber wristbands of about 11 cm connect to the body, the ends are fixed by a square plastic buckle, the back of the body is a sensor for detecting heartbeat, and on both sides, it is a card slot for reading data, a charging port, and a physical button for selection and determination.
It is hard to deny that whether it is the first generation or the "Life Bracelet V" I use now, the biggest problem with them is that their body is somewhat beyond the thickness of the "bracelet".
From the side, the body of the life bracelet is somewhat abrupt, its actual thickness is about the same as the thumb of an adult man, although you will not feel any excess weight, but in the autumn and winter, it will inevitably bring some additional trouble to the wearer's clothing.
The green light on the back is emitted by a heartbeat monitor
However, after understanding that its essence is a toy, these problems about hardware or styling can be put aside first. After all, for its target users, it is more important than "whether the bracelet is good" or "whether it is fun to cultivate".
As I introduced earlier, the life bracelet will be based on the wearer's behavior and vital signs, converted into "Vital value", that is, the energy of the Digimon Baby, the amount of these energies, will directly determine the current Digimon, the total number of health points in battle, and the best way to get the "step count" and "heart rate" at the same time, naturally is to exercise.
Conversely, if the player does not wear the bracelet for more than five minutes, not only will the "Vital value" decrease rapidly, but the Digimon in the breeding state will also appear "in a bad mood" situation, and eventually even lead to death.
Bandai originally conceived a gameplay loop, player movements, to NFC battles, and then to APP linkage
Although it sounds like nothing wrong, this process of using "vital signs" for cultivation has some extremely fatal flaws in the early life bracelet - that is, he does not consider what kind of life routine a normal adult has.
In real life, most adults have a fixed life time and only enjoy a small amount of exercise time. Under these conditions, trying to accumulate "Vital value" by exercising in daily life has naturally become a not so simple thing. This problem has even led to many adult users who need to adjust the machine time in order to play normally.
In response to the doubts of the original bracelet, Bandai made software-level changes on the re-released "Life Bracelet V". In addition to deleting the basic rule of "more than 3 minutes of no exercise will reduce the Vital value" in the original version, it also added a "sleep mode" that allows the Digimon to sleep at any time to save energy, so that the player can control the Work and Rest of the Digimon by themselves, and will not lose the accumulated Vital value in vain.
Although it is only a few small changes, but the cost of play has been reduced a lot, as far as the designer's original idea is concerned, this change really ensures the basis of the bracelet play cycle.
Under the premise of affirming the basic gameplay of "Life Bracelet V", let's take a look at the most critical "Digimon Cultivation".
On the left side of the bracelet body, there is a chip reading port that is slightly larger than the charging port, and the most important role here is to read the Digimon data card that you want to cultivate, referred to as the "DIM card".
According to the different Digimon cultivated, the types of "DIM cards" are also different, except for the DIM card of the animated protagonist "Gamma Beast" that comes with the purchase of "Life Bracelet V" (the old version of the Life Bracelet comes with "Pulse Beast" and "V Boy Beast"), other DIM cards need to be purchased separately, in a sense, it is also an inherent routine of selling toys. However, in this case alone, this money is not worth spending more, it really varies from person to person.
The three DIM cards I currently have in my hand, the middle of which is the "Gamma Beast" that comes with the bracelet.
Just said that vital value will affect the growth of Digimon baby, we all know that the most important item referred to by this "growth" is naturally the rich and complex evolutionary route of the series, and the most interesting part of the life bracelet is actually here.
You know, in addition to the simple cultivation, "battle" has always been a digital tyrannosaurus machine, and the biggest difference between Takuma Kaeko, and this point is naturally inherited to the life bracelet. There is nothing to say about the battle, not much worse than in the past, it is still the "you hit me to fight" process, but the method of triggering it uses some new things.
"NFC", or "near-field communication", is another major gameplay core of the life bracelet.
NFC is certainly not a high-tech thing, from buses to community access control, to mobile phones, it has long been known in our lives. The NFC chip built into the life bracelet can read the Digimon that exists in it and launch an automatic battle when it comes into contact with such devices.
It's as if Digimon are really living in electronics, or the Web.
Of course, the principle of this is extremely simple, NFC plays only the role of triggering, while contacting the NFC device, the bracelet will retrieve the internally stored data and fight with the player. It's just that if you think so, then the toy doesn't have any dreams.
Players can also pass the cultivation object into the supporting APP "VB Lab" and view the corresponding data
In addition to the Active value accumulated by the player's behavior, the number of Times Digimon participates in battles, the overall winning rate, and the "trophy" earned to complete a specific mission will ultimately affect the evolution of the cultivated object. With the exception of some "bonus DIM cards" with a demo nature, most Digimon use at least four branch evolutionary choices.
Multiple evolutionary branches, which in some way guarantee a DIM card, also have the value of repeating play. Taking the "Life Bracelet V" I used, and the gamma beast it comes with, for example, although the evolution route is small, even so, it also has three ultimate bodies of the Steam Wrist Dragon Beast, the Chaos Dragon Beast and the Sacred Shield Dragon Beast, and if you want to cultivate or fill the atlas at the same time, it will take a lot of time. And if your target is a DIM card that is commonly sold in other markets, the process may be much longer.
However, it should be noted that the evolutionary route adopted by the life bracelet has some subtle differences from the cognition of most domestic players. For example, in "Digimon Adventure", the beautiful partner Cactus Beast did not appear in the evolution route of the Baru Beast, which is not too much of a problem, but it is inevitable that people will feel a little pity.
Having said so much, I believe you have some basic understanding of what the life bracelet is, as far as my own most direct feelings are concerned, its (at least "life bracelet V") experience is still quite positive, at least a toy should give me something, it has done.
At the same time, it must be admitted that compared to the traditional digital tyrannosaurus machine in the past, it does have many advantages, but these advantages are put on the entire "player group", and it seems that they are not exactly advantages, so what I want to talk to you next may be some more subjective experiences and views.
Under the premise of sufficient exercise, it actually takes only four or five days to cultivate a ultimate body
For more than a month, I wore a life bracelet almost every day except on days when I didn't go out at all, and although I groped for a long time in the first half of the month because I couldn't figure out the actual gameplay, after mastering the trick, everything became smooth.
First of all, in order to win the Digimon battle, players need a certain Amount of Vital value as a guarantee, but due to the nature of the work, I spend most of my day sitting at the computer and desk. In order to make up for the lack of exercise every day, I will choose to commute on foot as much as possible, my residence is about 1.5 kilometers away from the company, the time required to commute to work one way is about twenty minutes, and after the step conversion, I can get about 300 or so Vital values. This value can be put in the whole day, about 750 to 800.
What is the concept of 800? For example, a fully-bodied Digimon can have a maximum of 7500, which means that without the use of special items and without additional exercise, a fully-bodied Digimon will take about a week or so to reach its full power.
After passing into the app, players can participate in networked battles
As a mild outdoor enthusiast, I don't skimp on spending time out, and the Life Bracelet is a good reason for me to exercise moderately in my spare time.
However, looking at this matter in reverse, people are always inert, and no one has time or strength to exercise, not to mention its users, who may still be a group of gamers who sit in the office every day like me. Then, "you can't play without moving", which sounds too "hardcore". A certain "card guy" editing teacher in the same office as me has been playing with the bracelet for less than a month, and has already re-raised a round.
Of course, these problems can also be forcibly solved through some "black technology". But past experience has taught me that the end result of doing so is most likely to be empty.
The interconnection of the bracelet and the APP
Since it is not good as a simple toy, what about it as a special sports aid?
In terms of results, you can indeed get some extra power and fun from it, but as far as those real sports assist bracelets are concerned, the actual function of the life bracelet may still be in the early stages of the industry.
Regardless of its smart bracelet, the monitoring function is only two kinds of step counting and measuring heart rate, and even the actual accuracy of its calculation of steps is still stuck in the degree that can be simply confused by relying on the "walker". As far as the measurement tools are concerned, this is also a little too loose.
What is particularly interesting is that because of the nature of the work, I will usher in a deadline every two days, and at this time, my relatively fast keyboard action will also be misjudged by it as walking, a manuscript down, sometimes can walk thousands of steps, although the lack of heart rate bonus, but also can get a good Vital value feedback, so that I really do not know how to react is good.
Although the designer sets the preferred type of exercise for each cultivated object, under such a loose detection basis, the user really has no ability to define his own behavior, as a sports aid, you probably can't find a more serious problem than this.
Fight against each other through the phone's NFC chip
Although from a personal point of view, the design concept of the "Life Bracelet V" and the actual use effect are interesting enough. It does greatly simplify the gameplay and mechanism of the traditional Digimon Tyrannosaurus machine while greatly simplifying the gameplay and mechanism of the traditional Digimon machine, and links the cultivation rules with people's daily life behavior.
But these feelings are too subjective, it has a lot to do with my personal living habits, if you put it at the commodity level and IP value, the life bracelet shows the ambiguity of its own positioning. Its product image is very easy to misunderstand, but unfortunately, whether it is as a toy or a smart bracelet, it seems to have some lack of stamina.
Sandwiched between children's toys and sports aids, this awkward position may have determined from the beginning that this product will be extremely selective.
On the one hand, "Digimon", which has some history, has been stripped too far away from the popular culture of public perception, and in the domestic market environment, most of its fans are no longer young; on the other hand, players who can find a balance between work, entertainment and sports are indeed not in the majority.
Getting adults to pick up toys again isn't easy. In general, although the life bracelet has done a good job, the result can only be unflattering at both ends. As a toy, although the new version of the "Life Bracelet V" has made great progress on the basis of the original version, the problems at the hardware level have still not been improved.
It seems that in addition to the belt and the shapeshifter, Bandai still has a long way to go if he wants to get adults to pick up the toy again.